Billet Labs, a British brand known for premium PC components, has unveiled a unique project that showcases an advanced gaming system. This setup utilizes an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor and the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card, while completely eliminating traditional cooling fans.
The engineers at Billet Labs designed a complex custom cooling system featuring three large passive radiators measuring 40×20 cm, 28×14 cm, and 24×12 cm. The key innovation of this design is the absence of mechanical pumps for liquid circulation.
In this system, the coolant moves solely due to natural temperature gradients. Heated by the CPU and GPU, the liquid rises to the radiators, where it cools, becomes denser, and then descends back to the heat exchangers.
To further dissipate heat from the Gigabyte Aorus Pro B850 motherboard, it was mounted on an 8-millimeter thick aluminum plate using dense thermal pads.
The only component that retained a fan was the 600W power supply, which was left unchanged for safety reasons during the experiment.
The results of stress tests conducted on this fanless PC were noteworthy, demonstrating remarkable stability across various everyday and demanding scenarios:
Idle Mode. According to the developers, the system performed flawlessly. The coolant temperature remained at just 28 °C.
Cinebench Rendering. Under 100% load on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D for 30 minutes, the coolant temperature rose to 39 °C. The CPU itself reached a maximum of 90 °C, but the system did not experience any throttling, allowing the chip to deliver its full performance.
Heavy Gaming (Cyberpunk 2077). The simultaneous operation of the powerful RTX 5080 graphics chip posed a significant challenge. The coolant temperature exceeded 55 °C.
Despite this, the computer operated stably without crashes or artifacts. However, the engineers acknowledged that such coolant temperatures exceed the recommended limits for safe long-term operation of the hardware.
This project by Billet Labs clearly demonstrates that passive cooling for modern high-end components is feasible. Nevertheless, for everyday silent gaming, users will still need to find a compromise—either by limiting the power consumption of the chips or by designing even larger radiator blocks for effective heat dissipation.
Billet Labs has successfully developed a fanless gaming PC using a custom passive cooling system, demonstrating the viability of passive cooling for high-performance components. While the system shows promise, it also highlights the need for careful thermal management in demanding applications.